Txtnation.com

[Cav_king]

Hi All,

I recently had a Idea for a good business and decided it would be a good idea to start this business up.

The business involved Estate agents sending MMS messages to its potential buyers using an automated service.

The company I chose to provide this service was Txtnation.com

I sent and received many emails to and from the manager of this company. After all the emails we finally agreed to a package that would suit my requirements - I basically gave him a list of all the things I required their service to provide, and he agreed that he could help.

It finally came to the signing of the contract, I paid £600+ pound to sign up to this service and £50+ per month for the monthy charge.

After paying this money and signing the contract, they sent me log in details to allow me to start using this service. When I signed up to the website to set the service up, I found out that I didnt actually get what i asked for.

I thought the service was going to be set up, ready for me to personalise and start the ball rolling. What i actually recieved was log in details to start using the service, and an instruction manual with a whole lot of programming codes etc which I did not understand at all.

I gave the code to a programmer and he didnt know what to do either.

I spoke to the manager to get help and he said 'Sorry, I am not the Support department'.

And that was it.

Within minutes, I wanted the contract destroyed and my money returned.
I sent an email to him to request that the contract should be destroyed and money returned and his reply was. If you want to unsubscribe to the service, we require 12 monthly payments stop the service....

I wasnt going to pay them £1200+ to be signed up to their service for ten minutes and tried to work with the service.

It has been about 10 months now - Every month, the have taken £50+ from my account and I have not used the service once.

I have lost interest in setting the business up now because I have been beaten to the punch.

On the grounds that I have not used this service once, Is there anyway I could get this money back?

Sorry for waffling on

I would be very grateful for any replies or advice you may have for me,

Thanks in advance,

Cav_king

[buzby]

I wouldn't think so, certainly not that far into the deal. It is easy to say, but if you didn't have reservations of the suitability of the service then you shouldn't have signed up. For the money charged I would have expected at least a free trial period to make sure it worked for you and iron out the problems you now complain of.

I have signed up with many web hosting companies over the years, so great some dreadful, and I had to pay up front but in each case I would never give them unrestricted access to my bank account. That's simply madness. If things weren't going the way they should within the first month, you may have had an opportunity to cancel (read the contract) but to claim foul after so many months, especially when the issue appears to be your technical knowledge of how the system worked, rather than any fault with their service - it does look as you need to give notice of termination if you've not done this already, and treat it as a valuable lesson - albeit an expensive one.

[Bookworm]

Why on earth are you still letting them help themselves to your account? Cancel the DD IMMEDIATELY!

Then, go after them for the refund of your money, on the grounds that you paid for a service which is not being provided. However, one of your difficulties will be why it took you 10 months to deal with it, but that shouldn't be too hard to bypass.

You need to have a good read of the FAQs and step-by-step, and also the law that applies to contract and failure to supply a service paid for, and decide whether it applies to your situation before proceeding.

[buzby]

Originally Posted by Bookworm

Then, go after them for the refund of your money, on the grounds that you paid for a service which is not being provided. However, one of your difficulties will be why it took you 10 months to deal with it, but that shouldn't be too hard to bypass.

Really? You think that user incompetence is a reason to escape a binding contract? That'll be a first. As noted in my earlier (realistic) response, if the customer is unable to access a service due to its unavailability, your response would be quite valid. If the service was there, and the customer effectively didn't know how to use it, OR seek support, then there's no issue.

Just to be sure - a hypothetical - if a VM customer signs up for a years BB at 20Mb, and after 9 months discovers he's only getting 2Mb because he has his proxy setting wrong, you would maintain that VM have to refund him the difference because of this - even though those settings were not under its control, even though the full bandwidth would be available on a correctly configured PC?

[buzby]

Bookie - I've got your reply to this via email, but I don;t see it in the Forum, so apologies if I append my response here.

You talked of promise of supply - the service was there, however the user was unable (or unwilling) to use it. The certain terms you refer to most probably did not expressly require the service owner to do anything more than provide technical support. As for 'Breach of Contract' we've already established that the user was not able to set up the service himself, yet clearly the fact others had the wherewithal to do it (We've no reason to assume on just 1 report that the service was unusable for others). There would be no breach of contract, indeed in this type of industry unless there are additional performance provisions (as guarantees) the prospect of a breach grow even slimmer.

How should it be an 'unfair term' to enter into a 12 month contract, yet because the customer changes his mind and wants out before then without paying anything it is an unfair term? That's exactly what happens if you take on a contract mobile phone.

I do hope the OP is able to reach some form of understanding with the firm, but your initial 'slam dunk' response that his contract was not worth the paper it was written on was at best misleading - but giving false hope where there is none gives an unreasonable expectation of success.